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2of5A Mexican gray wolf at Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport. Captive-reared Mexican gray wolves were reintroduced into the wild as part of the Endangered Species Act.Photo: Hearst Connecticut Media file photo

3of5photo courtesy of Jim Fenton The Piping Plover is one of many endangered birds that have been seen in the Important Bird Area (IBA) that straddles the coast of Stratford and Bridgeport. 2008Photo: Contributed Photo / Contributed Photo

4of5A piping plover Mar. 13, 2012 at Milford Point, one of the first to be spotted in the area that year.Photo: Hearst Connecticut Meida file photo

Connecticut will likely join other states in contesting new rules that weaken the federal Endangered Species Act and — for the first time — allow economics to influence protection decisions.

"The ESA has been an American success story and its protections are by now deeply embedded in our national discourse about the environment,” said Attorney General William Tong. “We will be closely monitoring any multi-state action that responds to these regulatory revisions, and we will closely evaluate all of the possible legal options that they may present.”

“There are a lot of rollbacks going on, such as the amount of mercury that can be emitted and changes to the Clean Water Act,” Comins said.

“We are turning back the clock on protections and it’s really the public who have to figure out the costs,” he added.

New standards

The administration’s new rules change how the Endangered Species Act is applied and in general make it more difficult to protect wildlife from threats, including climate change.

The revisions make it easier for regulators to remove a species from the endangered list and weakens protections for threatened species.

Regulators can consider the economic value of a development project — such as allowing logging in a certain region or building within sensitive shoreline areas — when deciding whether a species must be protected or the project halted.

ESA protections have stopped many developments over the years, such as logging routes or massive hydroelectric dams. By gaining protection for a certain species — some as small as a nearly extinct snail — activists often stop bulldozers and other forms of destruction.

Some Republicans have long sought to eliminate or water down the ability of the landmark federal law to prevent economic development.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said the new rules balance the need to protect the environment and ease the regulatory burden on developers and industry.

“The revisions finalized with this rulemaking fit squarely within the president’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species’ protection and recovery goals,” Ross said.

Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist, recently published an op-ed piece in which he called the ESA an “unnecessary regulatory burden.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, said the Senate is empowered to reverse executive branch rules and vowed to seek support to stop the Trump administration’s actions.

“There is no exaggerating the impact of this rollback,” Blumenthal said.

“The rollback of the ESA sidelines and straight jackets science,” Blumenthal said. “We in Connecticut have 1,500 species still in danger and thousands of kinds of wildlife. The rollback is a giveaway to special interests.”

Lou Burch, program director for the Citizen’s Campaign for the Environment, blamed corporate greed for the new rules.

“This is what happens when you put lobbyists for oil and gas in charge,” Burch said. “These rollbacks place corporate priorities over the lives of threatened and endangered species.”

Plovers and pelicans

In Connecticut, there are fewer endangered species than other regions of the country. But there are still hundreds of birds, lizards and other animals which have threatened or endangered status, and many more await the designation.

The Piping Plover, a tiny shoreline bird, has threatened status — a step below endangered — and nesting sites along Long Island Sound are protected, meaning people must stay away.

Other Connecticut species protected by the ESA include the northern long-eared bat, the bog turtle, red knot, peregrine falcons, the bald eagle and brown pelicans.

Comins said Trump’s new rules make it more difficult to add species to the ESA, such as the saltmarsh sparrow, whose status is now under review.

“If that decision is delayed it may mean this bird could go extinct before it is even afforded additional protections or conservation resources to find solutions that may lead to its recovery,” Comins said.

In a tweet last week, U.S, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted “The assault on the Endangered Species Act made by the Trump Admin showcases their unwavering commitment to placing the needs of special interests above public interest, ignoring the need to protect endangered & threatened species.”

Real benefits

A recent study by the College of William and Mary and Millersville University of Pennsylvania concluded that the 1973 ESA has been a success and credited the law with saving the bald eagle and dozens of other species.

Those include the Virginia northern flying squirrel, the Louisiana black bear, the whooping crane, the Arctic peregrine falcon and the humpback whale.

But the study warned climate change and other man-made factors are dramatically increasing the number of endangered species.

"We're trying to come up with signs that will help to inform the policies and how we actually manage our fauna and flora — I think that's what gets us going," Matthias Leu, associate professor of biology at William and Mary, told the Associated Press.

Collette Adkins, senior attorney and carnivore conservation director in the Minneapolis office of the Center for Biological Diversity, said man-made impacts are driving extinction to levels not seen since the dinosaurs.

"But, unlike the ones that were caused by natural factors, these [extinctions] are caused by people,” Adkins told the AP.

Comins pointed out that while Connecticut has its own endangered species law, the ESA is far stronger and overrides state law.

“The [state law] only comes into play when state projects or state funding is in play,” Comins said. “Even then, there are ways around it. Federally listed protections are much stronger.”

Tong noted “The Trump Administration, in pursuit of its deregulation agenda, has increased the likelihood that less stringent federal application [of the ESA] will upend the emphasis on preservation and conservation.”

Bill Cummings is a veteran newspaper reporter who first joined the Connecticut Post in 1989 as a town reporter. He has served as a bureau chief, manned the Capitol Bureau, covered Bridgeport City Hall and was later named group Investigative Reporter. Bill also covers environmental issues for Hearst. He previously worked for the Watertown Daily Times in New York State and the Star Herald, a weekly in northern Maine.